TWO
THE G.O.A.T.GOAT
KATHIE
13 February
“Benedict Bandersnatch is a jerk!”
I looked up from my laptop to eye the flushed face glaring into my office.“I fervently hope you are talking about your goat, and not the actor of a similar name, because he is awesome, and your goat is not.”
Clara gasped the gasp of a fourteen-year-old goatherd who assigned human personalities to every single one of her beloved twelve goats.“Mum!How can you say that?My goats are the GOAT.No other goats give as much milk as they do.Plus they’re smart and clean, and Dad says that they are the best-smelling goats he’s ever seen.Their TikTok game is strong.And they’ve won awards!”
“You’re right, I’m wrong, and you can please nip in the bud the lecture I can see you badly want to give me.How do you feel about being a bridesmaid?”
The second love of my life—the first being my delectable husband, Iain—gave me a look initially sour, but which morphed after a few seconds into one of speculation.“Are you and Dad getting married again?Can I officiate?You said that our membership into the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster means I can marry people.I’ll wear a kilt to do it.Is Grandma coming for the wedding?She promised to bring me the outfits she kept from when she was young.I could do all sorts of shots of the goats with me in flower-power dresses.Maybe I should make a new soap for the wedding?People love special-event soaps.”
I had to wait until she paused to take a breath before I could answer.“Dad and I are not going to have another ceremony—one was enough, thank you, although your father’s side of the family looked stunning in all their kilted glory.”I spent a few minutes gazing at our wedding picture, which I had cropped down to just Iain standing outside a ruined Scottish castle in full kilt.Although he had more threads of gray in his hair now, he was still just as gorgeous as when I’d met him some fifteen years earlier.“Emily is going to finally marry Fang, and she said she’d be happy to have you be a bridesmaid if you want.”
“Oh.”Clara leaned against the doorframe, and pursed her lips.“I suppose that would be OK.Would I have to wear some horrible poufy dress?”
I was well aware that Clara was going through a bit of a clothing-conscious stage, where the selection and wearing of certain garments became of tantamount importance to her.“I doubt it.For one, Emily is not a poufy-dress sort of person.In fact, I’m willing to bet she’ll show up in a very nontraditional dress, if she even wears one.”
There was more lip pursing from Clara before she straightened up.“OK.”
“It’ll be during the week you’re off, so there shouldn’t be a conflict there, although I’m hoping we’ll be able to stay in Cornwall for a couple of days as a holiday.”
“I don’t know that I can do that,” Clara said with a shake of her head.“I have responsibilities, you know.August is the summer beach-party promotion, so I’ll have to be here watching everything.But I can take a day off for Emily.”A shadow loomed over Clara, who glanced over her shoulder.“Also, August is the time when I pick out the bucks for the girls.I want to do maternity shots this year.Someone did them on IG last year, and she got a ton of response.Are you going to Emily’s wedding, Uncle Ewan?”
“I have no knowledge of this event, but if you mean your cousin, then I would be delighted should I be invited, although I could have sworn she married her vet some time ago.”Ewan, Iain’s older brother, who looked and sounded like he’d stepped straight off a plummy BBC show, moved into sight and cocked an eyebrow at me.
“I’ll ask Emily, but she mentioned keeping the numbers down, due to a small facility,” I told him.
“I’m going to the soap barn.I want to try running another batch of frankincense, since the last one was a hideous failure because Lara put in way more oil than I told her.Honestly, Mum, it’s like she does it on purpose!When I pointed out that her batch turned out a mess, her face went all red and scrunched, and she cried and went home, and Joanna said she was trying, but everyone makes mistakes.I’m fine with mistakes!I just don’t want my name on soap that disintegrates the second it gets wet because SOMEONE put in too much frankincense.It’s common sense, after all.”Clara marched off without allowing me to respond.
“That girl gets more and more like Iain every day,” Ewan commented, looking after her.“The word phlegmatic comes to mind, but I suppose that’s a bit harsh considering she’s, what, twelve?”
“Fourteen going on forty,” I said with one of the martyred sighs that both Iain and I had become experts at over the last ten years.“And yes, she’s very like him.The farm is in her blood just like it’s in his.”
“There’s a fair bit of you in her, as well,” Ewan said with a flash of his devastating smile, the one that had garnered him six wives over the course of his lifetime.“She’s very enterprising, and that’s something about which the little man never cared.”
“I don’t agree at all—Iain is very entrepreneurial.He has to be, running a sheep farm of this size.Although thankfully now that David has taken over half the land, it’ll soon be less stressful.Once we get David through his first year, anyway.Do you really want to go to Emily’s wedding?”
He thought for a moment, then sighed.“I wouldn’t mind—I always enjoy seeing your family, since they are refreshingly unique—but Zoe would no doubt have something to say about it.Where is it to be held?”
I glanced at the note I’d scribbled during my brief call with Emily, and read him the name and address of the hotel.“It’s in Cornwall, and evidently quite charming and quaint.What are the odds I can get Iain into a kilt for it, do you think?”
“None I would take,” Ewan said with a shake of his head, pulling out his phone when it chirped at him.He answered, saying, “I’m here, my sweet one, ready to worship at your feet,” as he moved off through the door out to the small garden where I banned all animals in an attempt to grow a few vegetables.“Yes, yes, I will leave here shortly to return to your side....”
I made a mental note to tell Iain that Ewan was evidently still on good terms with wife number six, and idly wondered why she reminded me of Lilith from theFrasierTV show.“Maybe it’s the deadpan delivery,” I murmured to myself as I got up, fetched my pair of sunflower-covered wellies, and, tucking the sticky note with the date of the wedding into my pocket, headed out toward the stable.“That or the way she wears her hair, and bites the end off of words.Hello, Sunshine.Shall we go out for a bit?Damsel, wake up.”
This time of year, we put the horses into a pasture that ran the length of the drive out to the road, giving passersby a lovely pastoral view of horses grazing peacefully, while behind them rose the cozy barn we built the year before, and beyond that, the small white farmhouse, which also sported a new addition in the form of a soap workshop.I spoke loudly as I made my way toward the sunny patch of the pasture, which just happened to be next to the road.
